Monday, 21 July 2014

For those privileged lords that measure their life times over millennia, for those few monsters who have gorged on the terror of empires for time out of mind, there arises an ennui; a crushing all consuming boredom at the perversions of dark eldar culture. The soul shrivels, and excess burns to a thin lingering smoke trail of blasted memory.

Few have done so, but sometimes these lords will give his house's wealth, political assets and holdings over to an ancient homunculus in exchange for internment in the helmet of horror; the pain engine of the lords of Comarragh. For what care does a lord have for the welfare of his court if they bring him no joy?

The helmet of horror resembles the Talos, with an extended serpentine tail to keep it in contact with the ground. The carapace is thronged with an extended nervous system. Chemical injectors line the flesh of the pain engine, and at the end of the shielding lies the helmet. The is another sensory node that replaces the head of the lord and pumps a chaotic stream information into the body. This concussive assault of sensation is relayed into the minds of other combatants and in turn, so to can their sensations be fed into the Helmet: a reinforcing harmonic of agony that grows in pitch of intensity.

For the dismembered head, many light years, if not dimensions away from the danger, there is only the numbing cessation of being; waiting in one of the Homunculus's oubliettes for the sensations and experiences of the Helmet of horror to quicken their souls.

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I was inspired to create this piece after reading Victor Pelvin's The Helmet of Horror. It is a re-imagining of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and has left a lasting impression on me. The motif of the Labyrinth is a troubling one, explored throughout the work of Pelvin and Borges. I imagine the Dark Eldar have wrestled with such philosophical knots for centuries and have found ways to manipulate it into their pain engines.

The Helmet of Horror is essentially a logic trap - a second reality that supersedes the wearer and the controller both. When two Dark Eldar enter into the Helmet, they become master and slave both.

The kit was created using the current Talos kit and the Necron Wraith kit. The wearer is a conversion using an old Haemonculi. I painted the Talos to fit in with the rest of my Dark Eldar Kabal using TMM with green and blue washes. This is slightly darker than the rest of my collection and I'm aiming to paint more Dark Eldar like this. The blood effect was created with Tamiya Clear Red and a pinch of Black ink. The lump in the middle of the base was created by melting some plastic and forming it into a small circle.